Without doubt, Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice is the most Gothic comic book film since Alex Proyas’ The Crow with Brandon Lee. However, Batman V. Superman (B vs. S) is something very different than The Crow. The Crow was intended to be just one film, and future films almost destroyed the incredible work they’d done in that original, whereas B vs. S is designed to be the second film in the DC Universe and open the way to a ton of new films.

So you’ve now seen Batman v. Superman (B vs. S) and, if you’re like me, have a lot of concepts swirling around in your head. For regular readers of DarkestGoth, I’m going to assume that one of the thoughts swirling in your head was NOT that “this movie is too dark.” Unrelenting and deep? Yes. Confusing and dense? Maybe. Too dark? No. Arranged loosely in order of appearance in the film are my 12 theories on this film, some of which will hopefully give you new reasons to enjoy and respect this impressive film that’s been getting a lot of hatred. [WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD]

Like a lot of people, I’m very excited about the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens. Also like a lot of us, our experience with Star Wars is bittersweet.

I remember being around 8 years old when an uncle of mine showed me Star Wars for the first time on VHS and I was hooked. When I visited my aunt and uncles in Paris, France when I was 16 for a month, I grew so homesick and the only English movie they had to watch was Star Wars–and it reminded me of what I loved about the fantasy adventure there.

For those of us who love comics, the announcement that Marvel TV inked a four franchise deal with Netflix in 2013 to take some of their grittier properties and make TV shows out of them was a little confusing. Obviously, Rated R properties have no place in Marvel Studios new cinematic feature film universe which is decidedly PG-13, but would the Netflix shows be cheap, hokey takeoffs on these Marvel properties? (After all, Marvel TV’s own Agents of Shield on ABC has been hemorrhaging fans since its creation.)

Due to the power of these sort of “meta-art” concepts, the draw of incredible, tense movies like The Game, Inside Man, and Ocean’s Eleven, and the popularity of things like LARPing, some companies, like Lexington, Kentucky’s The Breakout Games, have decided to see about bringing the metagames found in complex board games and video games and the scenarios reserved to for edge of your seat thriller films to real life! (There are other companies with similar types of offerings out there, so, if you’re not in the Kentucky area, you can likely find places like this in your area. I’m going into…

When video games grew popular, it was assumed that people would play these animated games when they were children (when children already play a lot of games) and then grow out of them. But we began to learn that people didn’t grow out of them, but instead craved more complex mysteries and stories as they aged. This led to pivotal games like Myst and Rivven, which started the modern video game trend of well-created story and making your players use their brains, not just their reflexes. At the current rate of consumption of complex and morally challenging video games, in the near future…

It’s hard to be a modern creative person without having been exposed to conversations about the “meta-game” or the “meta-content” that’s behind modern creative works. This is made all the more confusing due to the fact that the concept behind how it’s now use in New Media is a hybrid of the noun version of this word, the adjective version, and something else. The French have a phrase called “Je ne sais quoi” which literally translated means “I know not what”—as in, there’s something else about what I’m talking about, but I can’t put my finger on it. It would be appropriate…

We’ve talked about: What is a Group Shoot? Then yesterday, we moved on to: How do you prepare for your group shoot? Now we move on to the actual day of the group shoot! The following 8 pieces of advice are written from the perspective of a model, since I get so many of them asking how to prepare for these types of group shoots. However, almost everything (even the ‘Games’ advice) can be done by photographers with just a little modification.

Yesterday we looked at the question: What is a Group Shoot? In today’s article, we look at how to find models or photographers to work with at a group shoot. (Tomorrow we’ll look at a list of best practices for the day of the Group Shoot.) Now on to V’s 12 Steps To Prepare for a Group Shoot!

Every year, numerous communities around the globe host group photo shoots designed to help models and photographers find each other. There are tons of benefits to everyone, since you can essentially go to just one location and work with five to six new photographers, models, or both. (Some folks do modeling half the day and photography half the day.) Sometimes these are hosted by colleges with large artist/photographer populations and sometimes they’re used by major ad and marketing agencies to spot new talent on both the photographic and modeling front. However, usually, they’re hosted by…

I’m known as Veronika Gypsy, but everyone just calls me, V. Your editor and I know one another because we both do photography with alternative models and we tend to hear some really amazing stories. As we got to talking, he suggested that I write for you because, with a little ingenuity, I can tell stories that others cannot. We decided that I would use a pseudonym and that I would change many of the details about my life so that no one would know who I was. By using a public lie like this, I could tell the truth about some amazing women I’ve worked with without risking anyone’s identity…